


The Photograph

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:22:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl has two demons tumbling down the ladder of his shoulder-blade, he has the north star on the back of his hand - situated between thumb and forefinger - guiding his steps home, and the wrath of the devil on the inside of his crossbow arm</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Photograph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FYeahRickyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FYeahRickyl/gifts).



> This story is set around 2:13 and then jumps around in a non-linear narrative, be warned.

 

 

 

Officially, T-Dog takes first watch.

Carl and Lori lock the door to Rick’s vehicle and sleep in the warmth of the car - secluded or barricaded - Daryl’s not sure which.  Beth takes the truck T-Dog drove, stretched out across the bench seat while Maggie and Glenn sleep outside, they find a patch on the ground that’s sheltered and relatively dry and curl close together.  Hershel is given Glenn’s car to lay down in, Carol sleeps close to the brick-wall, out of the wind chill and close to the fire, T-Dog a mere touch away as he keeps silent vigil. 

Rick hasn’t returned since that furious conversation earlier and Daryl has been awake for over thirty-four hours, he’s cycled out of sleep mode and hit ‘wide awake’ again for now, however long it lasts.

The fire’s dropped to mere ambers, fireflies spark in the dark, release and gutter out, the charred wood popping as it burns to ash, losing cohesion.   “ _The Germans are shooting at us,_ ” his grandfather used to tease, and mimed being killed each time the fire popped unexpectedly.  “ _Damn Huns are slaughtering us_.”  His teeth were yellow, his hair snow-white, he kept a ‘collectors’ Luger on the bedside table loaded with twelve parabellums, each casing embellished with an X on the head-stamp, and Daryl figured Merle’s fascination with everything Hitler stemmed from there. Their father’s old man fought with the 101 st Airborne from the shores of Normandy to the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden.  “ _Kill ‘em, boy,_ ” he used to choke out with his dying breath.  “ _Kill ‘em dead for me_.”  Daryl met his grandfather exactly three times in his entire life, the day he was born, when Jorhan attended the hospital with his daughter-in-law - dad was four months into a prison stint and had another four to go, Merle used to joke Daryl was the product of conjugal visits, his grin sharp and mean, it resulted in fist-fights all over Georgia until Daryl was old enough to figure out the dates didn’t match; Merle being Merle; acting like a jackass for the hell of it - Jorhan Dixon stayed long enough to ensure there weren’t complications with the birth, gave Daryl his name, then left.  He met him again (or the first time from Daryl’s point of view) at age six, undersized and lying on his belly in the dirt as the fire popped and cracked, as the flames writhed, his grandfather talking about Germans and tanks and falling from the sky, then once more, eight and dressed in his finest clothing, staring down at a wrinkled old face in an open coffin. He couldn’t match the visage in front of him to the black and white photograph of a young man in army uniform, sniper rifle slung over his shoulder, face angled into lean cuts. “You look like him,” his mother had whispered and pushed the dirty blonde hair from Daryl’s eyes. Her mouth wavered in reassurance when Daryl shook his head in denial, vehement, because he had seen the old body in the coffin and he did not look like _that._    “It’s not a bad thing,” she added later, staring at the photograph.  His grandfather was positioned on the far-left, almost out of frame, the rest of the picture depicted the men of Easy Company, a gaggle of survivors slouched on a patio.  He was looking away from the camera, looking toward something no one else could see. 

The tone of her voice was faraway, the way his mom spoke when she was three quarters through her first bottle of wine. “That’s not a bad thing at all. “

Jorhan Dwight Dixon was seventy-nine years old when he died.  It was mostly family who tended the funeral, and one old man who sat in the back row, his eyes a rheumy white/blue. The ribbons on his chest had been taken out and polished up for the day, until they fairly gleamed, there were wings stationed over his left breast-pocket, his suit impeccable, he smelled of upper-class and old money and he didn’t belong in the backwoods of Georgia, with its dirt roads and its deep, dark woods.  The stranger sat through the service without saying a word to anyone, spine-straight, old eyes watery.  When everyone filed out of the rickety old church he was the last to leave, and the only expression Daryl saw on his face was when Merle called out his brother’s name, the two of them scuffing in the dirt, cooped up inside for far too long and burning with excess energy. 

His gaze flashed toward Daryl then, and the expression on his face was out-right surprised. 

The scrutiny raised the hairs on Daryl’s arms, it was too pointed to ignore, too drawn out to make him feel anything close to comfortable.  He took three steps forward, stance planted wide as he met that elderly stare head on.  “Somethun’ you want old man?”  Even at eight Daryl had mastered the sneer.

He had smiled faintly, looking Daryl up and down. “You look like Jorhan, son, anyone ever tell you?”

Daryl already knew he didn’t look like Merle, or much like their old man either, nothing like his mom, Merle used to say she spread her legs for anyone but that’s not exactly true, just him parroting what their dad said when drunk.  “Yeah? So what if I am.”

Merle had stepped close, older and bigger and always a little defensive when people paid too much mind to his younger kin. “Heck, I say it everyday.  He’s just a useless sack of wrinkled skin, same as that carcass over there; go get some muscle, boy, the girls around these parts are stronger than you.” The words were directed at Daryl but Merle’s gaze never lifted from the old man, daring him to react.  Daryl only remembers meeting his grandfather once, sitting beside an open fire as he spun tales.  The words don’t matter, Daryl reminded himself – carcass, sack of wrinkled old skin - the man’s already dead. 

There’s only silence in the wake of Merle’s interruption, the slow rise and fall of the stranger’s chest, before he unpinned the wings from his chest and held them out for Daryl to take. “He was a good man,” the stranger said, stiltedly, and left while Daryl stared after him, puzzled, and Merle scowled.  Those silver wings gleamed so brightly in the morning sun - they shone almost pure white. 

One day later Merle hurled the airborne insignia into the woods, his face bruised black and blue, his forearm broken. Physically, Merle grew up fast for his age, at fourteen he was almost as tall as their old man and by that stage, when his dad came flying at him with fists or boot, Merle started hitting back.  It would be another three years before he got the same bulk behind him, stockier in frame, barrel-chested, by the time Merle turned seventeen he could do almost as much damage as their old man did. But not back then - on the night of the funeral - their dad got shit-faced drunk and meaner than ever.

It’s not like the wings came from his grandfather, it’s not like there were any sentimental value behind owning them, but Daryl was fascinated by the cut, the sturdy weight in his hand, the unknown history between Jorhan and the stranger.  The only reason Merle threw them away to begin with was because he noticed Daryl’s preoccupation, because he was looking for a reaction, an excuse to hurt back, to do some damage and have it land for once.  “I’m gonna kill him,” Merle had shouted, and there was something wild and desperate in his eyes, unfocused and hurt. “I’m gonna kill him dead.”

Daryl spent three days scouring the woods looking for the insignia Merle threw away and never did recover it.  It was the first gift he’d ever received and the only time he spoke to his brother during that period was to trade insults.

When his mom found out, her mouth pursed into a thin line, she tilted her head for a long moment, considering, then handed over the photograph from the funeral.  It had been removed from the frame, burnt at the edges and curled in one corner, scrawled handwriting on the back depicted a list of names – Donald Malarkey, Dick Winters, Lewis Nixon, Carwood Lipton, Daryl Powers, and Jorham Dixon. 

“Have it,” she’d slurred.  “It’s yours.”  Some old black and white photograph, nowhere near as cool as the airborne wings he’d been given. 

Daryl had turned the image over and over in his hand, the men in the picture looked old to him, heck, the fact it was in black and white said enough, they were smeared with dirt, there were dark stains splattered all over their clothing, but it was the second gift he had received in less than a week, hand-me-downs as they were.  He took it outside onto the porch, where Merle was sprawled on the steps, his bruises were turning yellow, his plastered arm was out of its sling, cradled above his hip bone as he soaked in the sun, there was a half empty bottle of coke beside him.  “Here,” Daryl said, and dropped the photograph onto Merle’s stomach, took a seat beside him. 

“What’s it?” 

Merle plucked the photograph up, his face curiously blank. Daryl shrugged, picking at a nail, not staring at the broken arm at all.  “Jorhan was a tough son of a bitch, figured you must be like him too.”

Merle had grimaced, running a fingertip over the print. “Your hair’s getting too long, little brother, you’re rockin’ that pixie look.”

“Shuddup.”

“Mom gave you this?”

“She gave it to you,” Daryl said firmly and stared out across the street, where the police van was parked.  They had a tendency to swing by their street once a week, had a habit of parking opposite their house, making their presence known.  Merle spat. 

“About them wings: it’s just that…you take nothun’ from strangers, little brother, you hear me?   You accept nothing.  _Ever._ Not from some old fag.”

Daryl firmed his jaw, looked away because he was still kinda pissed about the insignia.  “Yeah, I hear you.”

Merle stared at the picture, and maybe it was the first gift he'd ever received too, his eyes were fixed on the men in uniform. He sank the last of his coke, flipped the bottle-neck then threw it, where it smashed across the pavement of their driveway, in full view of the police.   “Pricks,” he hollered out, and laid back on the porch step, with his black eye and his fat lip curling. “Yeah, you pigs are just _waiting_ for me.”

By the time Merle turned seventeen, he was hitting back just as ferociously as their old man.  Mom was already dead by then, and the new house used to quake with the blows they exchanged.  “I’m gonna kill him,” he’d pant, and there was something desolate in his eyes as he stared at the police van that still swung by their house every week - until one night - he left without a word said, abandoned their rubbish house and an eleven year old Daryl without so much as a by your leave. He enlisted in the army, tried for the Airborne Rangers but didn’t pass muster, went to Afghanistan anyway. Daryl figured it was Merle’s ticket out, the only way to escape a prison sentence, to escape the watchful eye of the police who were waiting for _something_ to erupt.  Ironic, since half a world away, Merle ended up in the stockade anyway.

“Did it for you, baby bro, best way to keep you safe. That’s Merle, always doing right by you, and don’t forget it, hear?  No one else gives a shit about your worthless hide, that’s for sure.”

And Daryl figured that was Merle to a tee – shit-eating grin and egotistical enough to think their dad’s violence was only ever aimed at _him_.  That Merle’s smart mouth, Merle’s attitude, was solely responsible for those hard blows, for that bone-deep rage that simmered in their father’s bones, and nothing to do with their actual dad.  That if he left, it would all magically stop and Daryl would grow up without a mark on him.  Daryl’s eleven the first time he’s beaten so severely as to be hospitalised, his cheekbone shattered. He’s eleven and a half when he figures out their dad’s violence has _nothing_ to do with him, or Merle, or mom, or anyone else for that matter, but everything to do with their dad, and if Daryl ends up with twice as many scars as Merle carried, then he never sees fit to tell his brother so.  

“I saved you.  I left and _spared_ you,” Merle says, smug, “You ain’t been through the shit I have, little brother.  That’s what brother’s do, see, they _save_ one another.”

Daryl swore at him, fought with him, fought beside him, called him an idiot and an asshole and never once tried to strip away Merle’s version of the truth, it’s what brother’s do, see, save one another.  He loves Merle entirely, he would have gone back into Atlanta with or without Rick, he would have kept that secret until the day he died. 

 

_(((He’s never shirtless in his brother’s presence, in fact, Merle doesn’t find out until many years, many roads later, and then his face stutters into bewilderment and rage, underscored with denial - the years crumple from his face until he looks like he’s seventeen again)))._

 

Instead, he wears a different pair of wings, a reminder that he’s Jorhan’s kin as well as Dewey Dixon’s son, and he weathers Merle’s gay jokes about the leather vest with good (and sometimes ill) humour. He has two winged demons on his back, tumbling down the ladder of his shoulder-blade, tangled together and close as brethren - he has the north star on the back of his hand to guide him, positioned between thumb and forefinger, and he carries the wrath of the devil on the inside of his crossbow arm.

 

_(((“I thought they were angels,” Micca had complained when Lizzie informed her, many years - many, many roads later.  “Aren’t they holding each other up?”_

_She had stared furiously at Daryl’s back, where the edge of the tattoo was peaking out of his shirt.  He was sitting beside Rick at the time, butt on the table and his feet on the bench-seat – their heads were lowered close together and Daryl’s spine was a low arc that pulled his shirt taut – by this stage, Daryl was older than the men in Jorhan’s photograph.  “Aren’t all demons angels?”  Micca had quizzed._

_“Don’t be a spaz,” Lizzie had retorted and rolled her eyes.  “They’re demons.  Jeez, not even Lucifer wanted to go down alone.”_

_“No,” Micca said, more firmly, with the stubborn tilt to her head that suggested this was what she had decided upon - and wouldn’t be swayed otherwise.  “They’re holding each other up.  They won’t fall, not while they’re together.”_

_“You’re so stupid.”)))_

 

Point is, Daryl grew up in a violent house, he took his blows when he couldn’t defend himself, forced to the ground and his face smeared into the dirt, a belt that cut through clothing, that tore through bare skin, and fists that rained down from nowhere.  He took a page from Merle’s book – became larger than life, Daryl isn’t quiet, he isn’t shy, not to begin with, he shouts and hollers, he fights dirty and spares nothing – he gets in people’s faces and makes his opinion known because the more aggressive he acts, the less likely someone will try to push back, and all of those tricks work wonderfully until the day he meets Rick Grimes – who not only stands firm, but _does_ push back - he holds a Colt to Daryl’s forehead, his gaze steady and sure – there’s no aggression in Rick’s stance, just the calm certainty he will pull the trigger if necessary. Daryl didn’t like him on sight – the memory of cop cars that sidled by their house, called in by neighbours, how they’d show up at the hospital the first time and asked for a statement, as if Daryl were a cry-baby and squealer both, rattling on the only kin remaining to him - he liked Rick even less when he found out about Merle.

Point is, Rick stabbed his best friend in the chest not twenty-four hours ago, and he’s been out in the dark since he dropped the bombshell about infection. 

Point is, Lori and Carl locked themselves into a car, and Daryl’s not sure if it’s the walkers’ they’re protecting themselves from or something else – something Rick-shaped and alien in Lori’s eyes – the entire crew is unsettled by the events of the last few days and Daryl can’t sleep.

He steps into the dark and closes his eyes, turned away from the campfire bodily.  Daryl waits, listening intently.  The sound of running water cuts through the night, an owl, and the annoying-as-shit sound of mosquitoes buzzing near his ear.  He waits five minutes before he opens his eyes again, and the night has turned monochrome, silver-bright.  It takes him less than five minutes to track Rick down, not that the man would have gone far in the first place.

The former cop has his hand on his piece when Daryl steps into view, his body whippet thin and tensed.  There’s a difference between what the mind knows and what the body remembers and for a full second Daryl thinks he’s going to draw regardless – all of Rick’s instincts snarling for a fight. It’s a marked difference from the greeting he got on the highway, Rick’s hand clasped tightly in his own, the relief on the man’s face palpable as his people drifted in one vehicle at a time. 

“Huh,” Daryl says slowly.  “You overheard all of that, then?”

“Come to kill me?” Rick parries, the edge in his voice sharp as a blade.

Daryl grew up in a violent house, sometimes adrenalin needs time to settle before the mind kicks in again, and paranoia can muck up a person’s rational beyond repair if it settles in for too long.  “You ain’t thick – and I ain’t repeating what I said to Carol when you already _heard_ it -  I’m not here to stroke your ego, man.”

Rick’s hand twitches, fingers uncurling one at a time. “Are Maggie and Glenn leaving?”

“Would you follow them if they did?”

Rick’s eyes flash, dangerously, and Daryl decides it might have been too early to ask the question.  Rick might consider it a challenge to the dictatorship he just announced. 

“Just curious.” Daryl allows, and says it as un-curiously as he can, dismissing the topic before Rick is forced to answer. “They ain’t leaving…just venting, good for ‘em and all that.”  Good for them, even if overhearing all of that wrecked havoc with Rick – they’re not close enough, their friendship too tentative – for Rick to voice any of his own concerns to Daryl, he wouldn’t allow that show of weakness right now and Daryl wouldn’t respect him if he did.  He stands rigid, gilded in moonlight and cold as a statue, Rick breathes out once, breath frosting the air. 

“What are you doing out here, Daryl?”

Daryl squints at him, shoulders the crossbow meaningfully. “I take it back; you are thick. In case you didn’t notice, walkers are all around these parts, being alone’s no good.”

“Says the man who went out on horseback.”

“Yep, and it ended splendidly.”

Rick doesn’t smile, he doesn’t even so much as relax, Shane’s ghost standing in the clearing and all the words spoken that can’t be taken back.  All the snide little complaints that dig under the skin, that break capillaries and score the bone. Not so long ago, not even a month ago, Daryl would have taken a page from Merle’s book – he would have shouted and raved – kicked out with his feet, drawn his blade, he would have gotten into Rick’s face and made his opinion known.  The one thing he wouldn’t have done is whispered behind the man’s back. Except Shane did the _exact same thing_ , and he did it nearly every day since Carl was shot – shouted, loudly and violently – whereas Daryl’s always been quick to adapt to his environment; he’s always been more observant than people gave him credit for. Daryl doesn’t need to shout and scream (it got Shane nowhere, Rick doesn’t respond overly well to shouting and screaming), he doesn’t need a show of violent force (people have a tendency to die rather quickly around Rick when they bare their teeth) Daryl sloughs off the loud brashness of his early days like a snake skin, revealing something quieter and more patient. 

He doesn’t need to fight any more, because on some level, Daryl agrees with the man, _with his idea of leadership_ , he’s started to trust Rick the more he sees of him.

“I ain’t ready to go back yet,” Rick says, unexpectedly. “She ain’t ready to see me…or I her.”  He’s not going to relax while they’re standing face to face, either, both armed to the teeth.  Shane, Daryl thinks again, frustrated, and wonders how it went down between them.

“Fair enough.” He steps closer, barely out of arm’s reach.  Daryl criss-crosses his feet and simply folds down gracefully, sitting Indian style in the dirt, the crossbow beside him.  “But I’ve been awake for hours now, sue me.”  Resolute, he stares out into the dark and doesn’t say another word.

Rick, for lack of a better word, stalks around Daryl from one side to another, casting him odd looks until the coldness bleeds out of his expression, replaced by something close to weary.  He circles Daryl and then drops to the ground, back to back with weapons bared, staring into the wilderness.  Rick’s spine is a long column of warmth pressed against Daryl, from shoulders to the small of the back, the two of them sitting like school-kids, propping each other up.  “Stay awake with me?” Rick asks, voice slurring.

“I got your six.”  Daryl confirms.

 

***

 

They stay out for another hour, until it’s time to relieve T-Dog from watch, and then wander into camp.  Rick takes the next two-hour stint, Daryl follows, watchful from the hours two to four, and then Glenn takes over before dawn. 

The walkers come at them just before morning light breaks.  Half of them are already situated in cars, the engines roaring to life seconds after Glenn raises the alarm, those on the ground scramble: T-Dog and Carol jump onto the truck’s flat-bed, with Beth behind the wheel; Glenn and Maggie pile into Hershel’s car. Daryl catches sight of Lori, her face pale and withdrawn, staring at them through the windscreen with Carl beside her as the cars pull away, and then kicks his bike into gear. 

Rick’s still taking out walkers, one shot at a time. He has Shane’s Mossberg in hand, the shotgun accurate and lovingly cared for, blasting away as he backs up. Daryl plants one foot on the gravel, revs the triumph and spins the back wheel around in a loop, letting the torque go and roaring forward.  Rick fires one more round.  He spins on his heel, straddles the bike in an impossibly smooth action, and then Daryl’s pulling away, pulling forward, out of the walker’s grasp, the triumph spitting up gravel as it flies off the embankment and onto the road proper.

There’s a hitch as Rick shifts position and Daryl adjusts the balance seamlessly.  The wind whips at his cheeks, walkers stagger onto the road, lurching, clutching at air. Rick wraps one arm around his mid-riff to counter-act the recoil, his right arm extended behind him in a straight line, and blows the walkers head to smithereens with a single blast from the shot-gun.

 

***

 

The prison falls – it falls to the sound of high-powered rifles, to the screams of his wounded people – the masonry and brick tumbles in a rolling dust cloud, their walls breached by a _tank_ – to Daryl, it feels like he’s falling from the sky; it feels like warfare of the dirtiest kind.  He falls so fast and so hard that the wings on his back are charred black, he’s covered in blood, smeared with dirt, if he saw that long-lost picture now, Daryl would recognise himself in a heartbeat.  Daryl has the face of a grandfather he never really knew, he carries the namesake of a stranger he barely met, and when he plants that arrow into the chest of the asshole behind the tank, there’s _nothing_ but unholy satisfaction.

 

***

 

“You’re my brother,” Rick says.

He can’t say it back, because Rick is everything, he is king and captain, Daryl’s guide in a landscape of darkness. He is friend, he is the blurred line between angel and demon and Daryl’s already laid his soul at Rick’s feet to collect.

He started this journey loud and brash, confident, but some of that has been knocked askew, or maybe exchanged, confident bluster replaced by deadly competence, they’ve all become master killers. Daryl’s more careful about the words he selects, they leave his mouth less frequently, but he’s never shied away from Rick’s space, never backed down from the heat between their bodies, the touch of skin on skin, the invasion of personal space like a sweet surrender.   _You’re my brother,_ Rick said.  When they’re alone, when time permits, Daryl replies eloquently, with the slow stroke of tongue on tongue, teeth catching on Rick’s bottom lip.  He replies with a caress down Rick’s flank, with his knee nudging Rick’s legs apart, he replies with a prayer or a curse, or a sharp grin, all of their bones laid bare.

He carries on his person two gifts - the crossbow Rick brought back from his run in with Morgan - and a photograph taken from Glenn’s camera before the prison was over-run.  The original survivors from Atlanta, splattered in blood, lounging near the barbeque pit on the picnic tables.  Daryl’s slightly out of focus, on the edge of the group, looking away – but Rick is caught in full view, sitting in the centre, his smile wry; it’s the third gift Daryl’s ever received in his life, and one he intends to keep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit is due - I hang around a certain tumblr like a bad smell. There are Band of Brothers references all the way through this story, fuckyeahrickyl asked for BOB AU a little while ago - I'm not gifted enough to transplant the WD characters into BOB - but the idea wouldn't entirely leave me mind either, resulting in this story, and btw, I will give my right arm to anyone who does fill her request because it has to be written.
> 
> Secondly, there's a piece of artwork floating around depicting Rick and Daryl on the bike, I stole it shamelessly, and stared at it for way to long.
> 
> Regarding the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne, no disrespect intended to the names mentioned.


End file.
